Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Unique

We've been getting some rain lately. On Sunday it was a here and there, now and then kind of rainstorm, while a few miles north of us in Conroe they got a solid six inches of rain.

I love an autumn rain, because nothing makes the fall colors more vibrant than a light steady rain.

Above: Our Japanese maples are beginning to turn color.

I'll bet several of you have been wondering whatever happened to the sweet potato that spent most of it's life growing pinkly in my kitchen pantry.
I decided to turn it loose, let it go wild, let it become a free range sweet potato.
Let it escape the cruel fate of so many other innocent sweet potatoes which are slaughtered during this Thanksgiving season.
Slaughtered and covered with miniture marshmellows.
Oh the horror of it all.
(Sing along: Born free, as free as the wind blows, as free as the grass grows, born free to follow your heaaaaart.....
Live free...where beauty surrounds you, the world still astonds you, born free to follow your dreaaammmmss...)

Sniff. Wait a second while I get a hankie. (honk) There, that's better.
That song always makes me tear up. Isn't it wonderful to see that sweet potato running freely just as God intended it to do?

Other sights in the garden: As you might have noticed after reading countless of my posts, I am enamored with tree bark. The textures and colors inspire me in my artwork.

Naturally Tiggie joined me in the garden. I told him it was wet outside, but he said he could handle it.
He could, except for the puddles.

Puddles, eech.

Now what?

You gonna help me out here or what?
Fine then, I'll just have to jump.

I'm over here now, where are you?

This has been really pretty and all, but I am ready to go inside now.

Bernie and I left Tiggie and Hart to snooze while we headed out for a more vigorous walk through the woods. As we started up the street, I saw this trail of red leaves.

Modern art, ancient art, freshly delivered to my curbside.

"Snowflake" Wilson Bentley, was the first man to photograph snowflakes and prove that each has a unique design. I always heard about that bit of marvelousness. Even in kindergarten, in the snowless climate of Southern California, we were taught about individual snowflakes.

I can't recall anyone making the same fuss about leaves.

Walking on the concrete path littered with fallen leaf gems, I had to wonder why this fact had not been pointed out as well.

So much easier to see and enjoy than a single snowflake...

So much color inspiration too!

If I hadn't been trying to keep my heart rate up, I'm afraid I would have shot up my entire disc.

Actually, that's not such a bad idea.

6 comments:

Marie said...

I love it that you let your Sweet Potato Vine go free. Way back when....in the olden days....when I was a little girl...my mom usually had a sweet potato growing in a Mason jar on top of the icebox (refrigerator). When it got so that it was crawling all over the top, she would trim it to about a foot and plant it beside the back fence or garage and make a wire trellis for it to climb. Then, she would start all over with a new potato.

White potatoes also grow in a similar manner, but we always just planted a piece of the potatoe with an "eye" in shallow dirt.

We also planted pinto beans for greenery - vines. But a plus of planting beans is that we actually had more beans to cook (in their green pod stage).

Memories........

Cristina de Prada - milliner said...

What gorgeous, luscious colors! Here it just go from green to brown, but what you get is a symphony of colors!

Lovella ♥ said...

Your colors are spectacular. I especially loved the pic of the red leaves showing you where to walk. So pretty.
Tiggie is such a good kitty. . .careful not to come in with wet paws.

Anonymous said...

Jill, you really made me laugh!

I love the leaves, the colors, and the lichen growing on the tree...the photos are great!

Sara at Come Away With Me said...

I love the leaf close ups at the end of your post - gorgeous, especially when I click on them and they fill up my computer screen. Even the sidewalk (or street?) is pretty close up - it has little sparkly bits in it.

Sara at Come Away With Me said...

Oh, and who knew sweet potato plants had such pretty heart-shaped leaves?